Product Description

In the 1976 Labour Party leadership election following Harold Wilson's surprise resignation as Prime Minister, the then Foreign Secretary Jim Callaghan was Wilson's favourite to succeed him. The main candidate of the Left was Michael Foot. The three most prominent standard bearers of the modernizing tendency inside the Party were Roy Jenkins, Denis Healey and Tony Crosland. All three had been exact contemporaries at Oxford University and each had more in common than separated them. Yet they could not get together and sort things out between them - and Callaghan won. Giles Radice's comparative biography of this group is an analysis of how the combined overall achievement of the three amounts to less than it might have been - how friendship and mutual rivalry, despite individual eminence and brilliance, are corrosive and damaging forces.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #358570 in Books
• Published on: 2003-09-04
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 376 pages

Review
* 'He has written a cracker. He so obviously admires his subjects that he does not feel the need to conceal their faults' - Daily Telegraph * 'The best political book of the year. a delight' - Independent on Sunday * 'A singularly vivid and strikingly accurate piece of modern political history' - Anthony Howard, Sunday Times

About the Author
The Rt Hon Lord Radice was Labour MP for Durham North until he was made a Life Peer in 2000. He has been Chairman of the European Movement since 1995.